Sherlock Holmes free to be re-imagined in US after judge removes licensing fee

Updated
Sat 28 Dec 2013, 7:44 AM AEDT

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Robert Downey Jr (C) took the leading role in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes.

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Filmmakers and authors in the United States have been given the legal go-ahead to write stories about British detective Sherlock Holmes without paying a licence fee.

First introduced by author Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Holmes entered the public domain in Britain years ago.

The literary icon has been kept alive in the public imagination with the help of scores of films, including director Guy Ritchie's 2009 film which starred Robert Downey Jr, and popular television shows such as the BBC's Sherlock and CBS's Elementary.

But a quirk in US copyright law, which protected 10 short stories in the vast Holmes canon, had allowed Doyle's descendants to retain intellectual property rights in the US.

A Holmes scholar challenged those fees after the Conan Doyle Estate threatened to block the distribution of a book of original short stories if the editors did not obtain a license to use the Holmes characters.

Judge Ruben Castillo rejected the estate's claim that since Holmes and his partner Watson were "continually developed" the copyright protecting the final 10 stories should extend to the characters themselves.

"The effect of adopting Conan Doyle's position would be to extend impermissibly the copyright of certain character elements of Holmes and Watson beyond their statutory period," Judge Castillo, chief justice of the northern district of Illinois, wrote in a 22-page opinion.

Judge Castillo ruled that only the "story elements" detailed in the 10 short stories published after 1923 were protected and that everything else in the Holmes canon was "free for public use".